by Sarah Dalton
We drive in silence for a while. I’m the first to break it.
“So, this is my world,” I say. “I’m the ultimate bad luck charm. Wherever I walk, so do the dead, and I leave destruction behind me. I’m dark energy, destined to float along with the rest of the dark energy.”
Jack taps his fingers on the steering wheel. Then he bites his thumbnail. “You don’t look dark to me. How did you feel when you sent Tasha’s spirit to the spirit realm?”
“Strong. Good,” I admit.
“You were as bright as the North Star,” he says.
Something tight leaves my chest. I let out a deep breath. Unshed tears still clog my throat, but they burn with raw emotion, not deep despair.
“That could have been me,” Jack says. “But you stopped her.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“She possessed me at first. But you frightened her away with the Athamé before she got a strong grip on me. You stopped her from hurting all those people with my body.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t have lived with myself. It’s bad enough that she took control of me, that she entered…” He trails off.
I ball the skirt of my dress in my closed fist. “It’s happened to me, too. A spirit possessed me at a séance. Nothing really happened; I just said some disgusting things. Sometimes I still think about it. I know how you feel. I… know what it’s like to have control wrenched away from you. I know what it’s like to feel helpless. If you ever want to talk to someone, you can talk to me.” I turn away and stare at the streetlights outside. They blur through the night sky. I narrow my eyes and turn the lights into neon streaks, but as soon as my eyes almost close, I see Tasha’s face in the reflection. I put my hand to my mouth, stifling a scream.
“Are you all right?” Jack asks.
“It’s fine,” I say.
“She’s gone,” Jack says. “She won’t come back.”
I lean into the car seat, close my eyes, and try not to see her.
*
“You both need to see a doctor,” Willa says. She frowns at Jack, whose eye is almost swollen shut. “Did you drive here like this? What the shit? Go and get sorted out, Jack.”
Seeing Willa chastise her brother injects some well-needed levity into the night. I sink into the chair next to her hospital bed.
“After tonight, the last place I want to be is a hospital,” she says. “I can feel the dead lurking in the shadows, waiting to talk to me.”
I nod. “Yep. I hate hospitals, too.” I let out a laugh. Despite everything, it’s nice talking to someone who understands. “Are your parents on the way?”
She shakes her head. “They’re in Paris giving a talk. They travel a lot.” She brushes some hair out of her eyes and adjusts a bandage. “How many times have you done that?”
“Fought a ghost? That was my third big fight. I’ve sent a few others back, but they were easy compared to Tasha. I’ve never seen so much anger.”
“She’d been through a lot,” Willa says.
I nod. There’s nothing else to say. There’s nothing I want to say. I just want to move on and forget it ever happened. But all I can think about are the bodies that were hanging from the ceiling in Travis’s house.
“I think my brother likes you,” Willa says.
“Me and about twenty other girls,” I reply.
“No, he really likes you. I can tell.”
I ignore the flush forming on my cheeks. I ignore the way my heart soars a tiny bit. “There’s too much competition going on there. He has all those… hangers-on. He’s a bad boy, and I don’t want to get into that right now.” I’m too vulnerable. I’m broken.
“No, it’s not like that,” Willa says. “There’s something you should know about Jack. He’d kill me for telling you this. In fact, I probably shouldn’t say anything.”
I sit up straighter. “Well, now you have to tell me.”
She twists a strand of hair around her finger before sighing and letting it go. “All right. Look, Jack isn’t the player you think he is. He goes on dates, yeah, but they never amount to anything. Sometimes he has girlfriends for a couple of weeks, but they get bored and move on. They think he’s not interested. Most of the time, he’s not.”
“What are you saying?”
“Jack’s got issues, but they’re not what you think. He doesn’t take drunk girls home from parties, he takes them home. You see, when we were living in the compound, the leader used to handpick the prettiest women to take to bed with him. That was the rule. And all those women had to have his children.”
My skin goes cold.
“Most of them loved to be picked. They wanted to be picked, because they were so messed in the head. But Jack’s mum had problems. She had mental health issues. She was beautiful, but she wasn’t all there. The leader used to force her to be with him, and then, after Jack was born, she used to tell him all about it. How he was the child of a rapist.”
I lean forward, feeling sick. “Oh, God.”
“Jack is a virgin, Mary. He’s messed up. He can’t be intimate with anyone because he’s ashamed and frightened.”
I sit up. “I can’t believe he went through that.” Darkness in the world. The things the living do to each other. Why is the world the way it is?
“He’s a good person, Mary. Jesus, I made a mistake telling you this. Don’t tell him I told you,” she says.
“I think I need some air.” I stand up and my knees start to buckle. I clutch the railing on the hospital bed, steadying myself until my knees strengthen.
“You won’t say anything, will you?”
I shake my head. “I promise.”
But I need air. I need to stop imagining Jack as a boy. I need to get out of here, where death surrounds me. I rush through the familiar corridors, under the strip lighting, passing the concerned faces of nurses. Staring eyes. Eyes following me everywhere. Finally, air. I suck it in like it’s my last meal.
“Mary?”
I’m relieved to see that it’s Lacey and not Jack. I couldn’t look at him right now. The pity would shine through my eyes, giving it all away.
“Lace.” And then it bursts out of me. “I’m a mess, Lace. I think I’ve been hallucinating. I kept seeing Mum’s face when we were fighting Tasha. I saw awful things. Dead things, and not like the ones I’ve seen before. My head is fucked. I… I think there’s madness in me. It’s just forming now, waiting for its moment. It’s building. Laying foundations. The roots are growing. One day, the branches of my madness are going to rip out of me and spread far and wide. I’m scared of what they might destroy in the process.”
When I stop talking, we both stand in silence. I gulp down the night air while Lacey gazes into the distance. She’s tranquil. There’s no crackle of electricity, no pallor on her skin. If her hair moved with the wind, I would be convinced that she’s alive. But it doesn’t.
Eventually, she says, “I’m falling in love with Willa. It’s making me crazy. I can’t even properly touch her, let alone have a relationship. I’m dead. I’m not supposed to fall in love.”
We stare at each other, both afraid of our feelings and our hearts.
“I’ll help you,” I say. “Whatever it takes.”
“I’ll help you too. Whatever it takes.”
~ A Note from the Author ~
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About the Author
Sarah grew up in the middle of nowhere in the countryside of Derbyshire and as a result has an over-active imagination. She has been an avid reader for most of her life, taking inspiration from the stories she read as a child, and the novels she devoured as an adult.
Sarah mainly writes speculative fiction for a Young Adult audience and has had pieces of short fiction published in the Medulla Literary Review, Apex Magazine, PANK magazine and the British Fantasy Society publication Dark Horizons. Her short story ‘Vampires Wear Chanel’ is featured in the Wyvern Publication Fangtales,.
There are books aplenty, from YA fantasy to YA horror, so keep in touch for more information!
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